The Three Soldiers

The Search for Peace

The Three Soldiers

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton

***

The American Civil War had now been over for seven years. While the United States were still trying, more or less successfully, to overcome the after-effects of the hardships, three ex-soldiers were still fighting, less successfully, with their own bad memories of surviving battles like the one at Gettysburg. All of them had recurring nightmares. All of them had lost friends and family. All of them had lost a loved one. All of them wanted something in their life to change, but they did not yet know how to change it.

The year was 1872.

Fate had arranged for them to find work around the same railway station of the city of Charleston. One as a woodcutter, carpenter and occassional state hunter, the second as a post office clerk. The third as a bartender at a saloon.
Their lunch breaks in March of that year were all held at a café, where they always found things to talk about. It was a welcome routine. Soon enough, they knew what the other one would order and would arrange for it to be ready if one of them would come late.

The fact that one of them, Bob, used to be a southern Confederate, and the other two, Jack and Bill, had been fighting for the Union, the Yankees, was unimportant to the three soldiers. They simply needed friends who would help them forget the pain and horror of their past.

The idea to take a break from regular society life came from Bob, the ex-Confederate and otherwise more quiet one of the three. A friend of his journeying out west had, by coincidence, found a ghost town with a fully equipped saloon, still fully stacked up with whiskey. Either all the young people there had left the town, the old ones dying, or some gunman had killed the few that still had been around. Fact was that the saloon had bedrooms with bed sheets and pillows and all that made it all the better.
How the town had been abandoned so fast was a mystery to everyone. Some speculated a mysterious curse or desert ghouls or the appearance of a dead villain in some kind of weird limbo. That seemed to matter little to the ex-soldiers. All that mattered was that there was a desoltate place where they actually could get away from it all and start fresh.
Bob suggested reducing everything down to basics, three buddies riding the country side on horseback, playing cards and drinking bourbon. Becoming and remaining human.

"No war talk, no society chat, no politics, no agenda, no newspapers. For 180 days straight, just us trying to stay focused, trying to find some well earned peace. A simple life."

It seemed like a fantastic idea.
Given the fact that they were from opposing sides made it all the better. Bill took this one step further. Maybe the press would even pick up on it and turn it into a peace project.
Jack, the bartender, was insecure about that. Was including the press a good idea? That was not the idea, was it?
Bob maintained that this thing was an effort for them to find peace, not invite more hubbub. It was an effort to stop recurring nightmares.

All three had spent long nights singing "Aura Lee" by solemn campfires on the evenings before battles, probably fighting against each other. All three still had wounds in various body parts from gun shots or muscat attacks. All three still had severe wounds in their spirits with nightmare traumas, neurosis and psychological damage their constant companions. It was high time to heal. No press. Just three guys on the way to nowhere.

They took only the most necessary belongings with them, swearing to stay true to work on their inner journey away from war. The ride to the ghost town was long, but once there the tranquility got to them.

A safe haven, the upstairs bedrooms of the former hookers serving as their sleeping places, so much bourbon in the shelves that every night seemed to become a thriving ecstacy. They laughed about the spirits of the girls still around there at night, keeping them amorous company.